Digital transformation is not only one of the biggest buzzwords or 2017, it also represents the biggest challenge that IT departments have faced in years. This reality exists for a number of reasons:

Mountains of Technical Debt—Mature organizations have, over the course of years, accrued virtual mountains oftechnical debt—legacy systems and applications that need to be modernized.

Technological Mish Mash—Organizations are using a combination of on-premises systems, private cloud systems, and public-cloud services, all of which must either be replaced or incorporated into a self-sustaining digital ecosystem;.

The Plateau Myth—Digital transformation isn’t merely a plateau to be reached, after which it can be forgotten about; rather, it’s a state of being where software, itself, must be intelligent enough to self-adapt to technical and business conditions. In other words, if organizations can’t easily sustain digital transformation in a business environment that evolves by the day, then whatever effort and money they invest in transformation might very well be wasted.

The Quantity Problem

Digital transformation—“software-driven everything,” by some definitions—will require exponentially more software development. Hand coding all of the requisite new apps would require a virtual army of engineers. And even if there were enough senior engineers to go around, the cost would be prohibitive.

The Technical-Debt Problem

Beyond the availability and cost of software engineers, there are several other problems related to hand coded apps, which

must be compiled, linked, and executed.

tend to be rigid, brittle, and inherently incapable of adapting to the constantly changing conditions of today’s digital business environments.

require continual maintenance throughout their useful lifespan.

It’s hand-coding custom apps and connections that led to organization technical debt to begin with. Hand codeing exponentially more custom software would just compound debt all the faster. Put another way, hand-coded apps are the antithesis of self-sustaining, software assets.

Traditional Low Code Is Part of the Answer

Clearly a new paradigm for application development is necessary, which is why Low-Code Development platforms have become a thing. Not only do sophisticated low-code platforms allow you to build anything from simple forms and workflows on up to composite line-of-business systems, they let you do it up to ten times faster than even the most Agile methodologies.

Furthermore, Low-Code platforms enable many types of apps to be built entirely without code. In other scenarios, the amount of code required to build and deploy an app is greatly reduced. This realty dramatically expands the pool of available development resources to include “citizen developers”—typically non-programmers with strong domain expertise and general computer skills.

Where Traditional Low Code Falls Short

If there’s a problem with many Low-Code Platforms it’s that they don’t so much eliminate code as they hide it. In other words, many platforms utilize a code-generation approach, which takes the visual app model and converts into computer code. This code must then be compiled, linked, and executed, just like any hand-coded app would need to be. And the outcome is the same—brittle apps that won’t adapt to a changing environment.

In some scenarios, this sort of app might work fine. In others, though, brittle apps simply won’t result in sustainable digital transformation.

Responsive Low-Code Platforms

Responsive Low-Code Platforms utilize a true model-driven architecture, where model components are abstracted into XML and pushed directly into a stateless process engine. Responsive application models can be modified at runtime, either manually, by business analysts or process experts, or programmatically via feedback loops of fresh data originating from devices or other applications.

The result is apps that can self-adapt to the constantly changing conditions.

A Stable Bridge to the Cloud

Furthermore, elite responsive platforms yield apps that run seamlessly across environments. This capability catalyzes digital transformation by creating an open bridge to the target state. Consider an organization that has an immediate pressing need—perhaps, it is running multiple SharePoint farms of different versions but wants to migrate all of them to Office 365. But this organization also has thousands of custom workflows that are locked into the various SharePoint versions, and these workflows may incorporate other systems, both on-premises-based and cloud services.

An elite, responsive platform would enable such an organization to replace these workflows with app models that would run on any version of SharePoint, including Office 365, as well as all of the other relevant systems.

And, these same apps would be inherently capable of self-adapting to all future versions of SharePoint. With workflows transformed into hybrid-ready application models, the organization could then push its various systems to the cloud on its own schedule.

Sustainable Digital Transformation

Authentic digital transformation requires software that can intelligently adapt to evolving conditions. To see this reality in specific relief, consider the alternative—an ever growing army of software engineers to continuously maintain exponentially more software than it is currently working with.

With intelligent, self-adaptive apps, an enterprise’s digital infrastructure becomes ecosystem like—capable of intelligently evolving based on manual or programmatic changes at runtime, neither of which require software engineers.